Brink Review - Xbox 360

Game Description:Brink is an immersive shooter that blends single-player, co-op, and multiplayer gameplay into one seamless experience, allowing you to develop your character across all modes of play. You decide the role you want to assume as you fight to save yourself and mankind’s last refuge for humanity. Brink offers a compelling mix of dynamic battlefields, extensive customization options, and an innovative control system that will keep you coming back for more.

Brink Review

Brink is a new IP from Splash Damage that attempts to bring story and context to team-based, objective gameplay both online and off, but will it complete its mission?

The Pros

Single character progression across all modes

Objective wheel makes sure you're contributing to the cause

The Cons

Campaign is a worthless addition

Lackluster weapons and maps

Terrible bot AI

Brink Review:

Editor's Note: This review is for the 360/PS3 versions of Brink only. Click here to read our Brink PC review.

When I first played Brink at QuakeCon 2010, I really enjoyed it and was excited about it’s eventual release. I was playing the PC version with an Xbox 360 controller and had a great time. Now, after playing the game for review on the Xbox 360 I question what the team has been working on since QuakeCon 2010 because it seems to be exactly what I played then.

Well, that’s not accurate. It’s worse than what I played then and that’s because Bethesda, possibly due to piracy fears, has sent Brink out to be reviewed on the Xbox 360. I haven’t played the final PC version, but the PC build I played in August 2010 almost a year ago played better that what I’ve been given to review on console.

With that, I need to be completely clear that this review does not fully apply to the PC version, though the core experience should be the same across all platforms.

Tripping Right Out of the Gate

On paper, Brink certainly has more depth than a Call of Duty title and in the console ecosystem where Battlefield is the closest competitor and Team Fortress 2 is a shadow of what Valve has evolved that game into, Splash Damage seems worried that this game will be too complex for the console warriors. How do I reach this conclusion? The game opens by offering up 1000 XP for your first character if you stop and watch a comically long video that spends what feels like twenty minutes explaining the ins and outs of every system before you even get to take your first steps.

After the cinema, you can fire up the campaign, do some challenges to unlock more weapons, or hop “online” in Freeplay for some multiplayer. The four challenges, each with three levels of difficulty, but only the first two levels of each challenge will unlock weapons and weapon mods. The third level is strictly for leaderboard scoring. They can be attempted in co-op, but honestly, these are just a chore to unlock the items and can then be ignored.

After that, you can go into the campaign or just hop online, which are basically the same mode except for the player count. The story primarily takes the form of mission intros and outros and take place both offline and online, but there’s little to get invested in or care about here. The campaign is just a collection of solo or co-op/versus matches through a series of maps that tie together in a loose narrative with bots filling every empty slot.

It may just be the circumstances of the review given the limited number of players at any one time, but I am already utterly sick of Brink’s bots. They seem to scale in difficulty to the number of human players you have in the game, but most of the time will just run to a spot, stand around, and shoot. Some will bum rush you with a shotgun and others will show no aggressiveness toward you. It’s a really inconsistent experience that does nothing to replace a human player. Unfortunately, I was only able to get into a game with 4 humans maximum during the review period, even during the “sessions” setup by Bethesda. I’m not sure if I was doing something wrong or if no one was around during these sessions, but I’ve basically played against bots the whole time.

Even when I was able to get online, most of the slots were filled by bots and even the addition of one human player resulted in a massive performance hit on the Xbox 360 version to the point where having a single human companion isn’t worth the drop in framerate and added latency.

I’m willing to make some concessions when it comes to the bots since the majority of players should be playing against other humans online when the game has actually been released, but unfortunately, there are far bigger problems with the core game to deal with. There are a lot of design decisions that are, frankly, quite surprising given that this isn’t Splash Damage’s first game.

We’re Going to Need Guns. But Just a Few.

I have not shot a single gun that felt good in Brink. For a first-person shooter, that’s a pretty big problem to have. There are assault rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, battle rifles, grenade launchers, pistols, and even a chain gun. There are a few versions of most of these, but they all feel the same. On the console, the game’s poor performance makes combat feel disjointed and unsatisfying. Grenades do poor damage and mostly just knock enemies down. Battle rifles shoot too slow to be worth using, leaving assault rifles and sub-machine guns for combat at all ranges.

The four player classes gain more usefulness as you level-up and unlock abilities, but the classes are mostly limited by the types of objectives they can complete. Soldiers can demolish things, engineers repair, operatives hack, and medics are there to keep everyone else alive. The biggest problem is that your class does not dictate your appearance or weapon choices. If you turn a corner and see four enemies, the only way tell their class is to hover over each of them and look at an icon. There’s no visual language. Beyond that, you choose your characters weight class which limits your weapon choices, mobility, and health. You can’t change your weight class between matches, which removes a lot of choices for class-swapping. I can’t have a heavy soldier that is better for thanking, a speedy operative, and a medium medic or engineer.

The pace of the game also feels way too fast for all of the depth the developers were hoping to cram into the game. Firefights quickly devolve into absolute chaos with player’s speeding into tight corridors or stopping points around objectives. It’s not uncommon to see over five players on a team lying on the ground incapacitated waiting to respawn or be revived as everyone rushes into the room with the objective only to be gunned down instantly. I really think the game would have played better with a slower pace. There’s just no time for any of the depth and class synergy to surface.

What Rhymes with Brink? Stink? Yeah, Let’s Go With That…

In the end, Brink feels like a game that got away from Paul Wedgwood and Splash Damage in the attempts to make it appeal to a wider audience and pack the back of the box with bullet-points. I would gladly trade the campaign, character and weapon customization, and experience system for a crisp, objective-multiplayer shooter with compelling weapons, classes, and depth. There are some interesting ideas at play, but unfortunately they are buried under a game that just isn’t that fun to actually play. I will give the PC version a try since the gameplay felt better to me back in August 2010 on the PC build at QuakeCon than the final Xbox 360 retail version and maybe that will help, but I’m probably not going to stick around and certainly not at full-price.

i think the game is beast it has good graphics great gameplay i hate the single player but the online is beast and xplay you only did the cons of the game and made fun of it it i almost dident buy it because of u i would give this a 4 or 5 you guys need to stop compareing to cod

Review is horrible. You need to rethink this and review it again. The PC and Xbox 360 are NOT THAT different! If you had the person who reviewed the PC version rate the console version. I bet it would still get a 4 out of 5!

i went into this game expecting it to be totally (because of this review) but after i got through making my guy look like bad ass and figuring out i only really wanna be a engineer, i got in the first match thinking OK this game suck and OK the controls were off but with tweaking i got it were i wanted and after a first half an hour of sniping repairing and helping my team CRUSH the rebellion i am convinced this game is a nice fun time waister (Not perfect) but what game is, i love this game and i strong recommend a rent do not pay attention to this review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

this review is a joke and is seriously outdated oh wait those up to date already know this BRink is one of the best new games and looks great on 360 and after sliding around you will question just being able to crouch in other games and yes other games will copy this in droves in the coming years

Most console games are inferior to computer games. Overall this game is terrible but it depends on the style of games you like. Crysis arguably is the best computer game for graphics and play. The console version of this game is nowhere near as good as the computer version.

Hmm....So Leah rated the PC version a 4/5....while Brian rated the console version a 2/5.Would it be safe to say that the real, final (averaged) rating is a 3/5? (Average FPS game)Averaged Pro: Engaging Objectives?Averaged Con: Spotty A.I. Bots? (Sounds an awful lot like Lost Planet 2's predicament..)-----Also..This review seems rushed & pretty much only covers the CONS in the game.Where are the PROS in the game??Maybe you need to replay the console version AFTER having downloaded the patches..?

Who wrote this reveiw anyways??? Whoever it was is a idiot. 2 pts better on the PC really???!!! I dont think so. The PC and Console versions are basically EXACTLY the same just on a different machine. Thats like saying its better on the PS3 than the XBOX.

why has everyone said this game is horrible but on the computer version it got a four out of five....people need 2 stop worshiping call of duty style games and embrace the new era of shooters if was up to me i would give this game a 5/5

I am so dissapointed, I has preordered the game nearly two months beefore realese and was at the midnight release. three days after I picked it up I returned it. Very Very dissapointed, splash damage is officially on my no-buy list. By the way the guys at my game stop are the coolest dudes ever, they gave me a full refund beven though they weren't supposeto. thanks guys.

To all of the people panning this game because it isnt CoD, or claiming Brink has tons of bugs: Black Ops had far worse bugs at release and is still plagued with terrible hitbox detection and terribad latency issues at times. This does not include the hideous spawn system... Brink is a solid game and it has far less bugs than Black Ops, and you are doing yourself a disservice if you pass this game up. Is it the next blockbuster franchise? Probably not, but it certainly is something worth experiencing. The gameplay is quite original and unique in many ways. If you only played bots, or couldnt get the hang of the game after your first match or two, try it again online vs players. Take your time, focus on objectives, and youll find it is a rewarding game with rewarding gameplay.

Brink did so many things different from most FPS games, especially CoD, and it is being hated and panned. Has the FPS genre become so pasturized that any game that isnt CoD esentially boils down to "it sucks if it isnt CoD"? It certainly appears that way, because the FPS genre has offered so many different styles of play for years; it would be a shame if people begin to dismiss anything without DUTY on the cover.